David Menkin is having a very good week.
“Every time I open my computer, nice things just sort of pop out at me,” he says. We’re speaking over a video call on a Tuesday, just a few days before his next big project will be released: Pragmata, Capcom’s long-in-development third-person shooter set on the moon. He’s been receiving congratulations from people who have played it pre-release and seen his name in the credits. Though reviews have already gone up, he’s still not allowed to tell anyone he’s starring in the game as it hasn’t yet been released at the time of our chat.
“I have gamers and streamers sending me messages and I’m able to sort of go, ‘Thank you,’ and send a little blue heart. But I can’t tell my brother or my sister,” Menkin says. “One of my nephews, he’s done that thing where he’s like, ‘So, you’ve been up to something?’ And I just shrug glacially.”
He recently had to go back into the booth to record some more lines for Pragmata trailers, which prompted an uneasy feeling. “I realized that I had to mourn it again,” Menkin says.
“Last year, end of the year, I sat on some stairs in London with a bunch of flowers that [Capcom had] given me to say thank you, and I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. You’re not allowed to talk about this stuff and you have to mourn it by yourself and nobody really understands,” Menkin says. “And it’s like, ‘It’s just a game.’ No, it’s not. This has been like a year and a half of my life.”
Menkin plays Hugh, an astronaut who ventures to a research base on the moon. His team winds up decimated and he’s quickly attacked by killer robots. With the childlike android Diana at his side — or rather, on his back — he has to investigate the robot threat and ensure it doesn’t reach Earth.
Menkin joined the cast of Pragmata in 2024. He recalled seeing it in the “Future of Gaming” PlayStation 5 reveal stream in June 2020, and then “completely forgotten about it.” And who can blame him? Pragmata was originally supposed to be released in 2022, and finally arrived on April 17, 2026.
“When I got the job, they brought us in to do something really nice, and very unusual in our industry, unfortunately, which is a table read,” he says. “I got to work with two of my fellow actors, one of them being Grace [Saif], who plays Diana. And that’s when we got the lore, not just of the game, but of the long history of the game.”
